


Static

by dragonofdispair



Series: Vampiric Codex [10]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampires, Dhampir!Ambulon, Gen, Vampires, slightly fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23355286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Ratchet didn’t expect Ambulon to be clingy.
Series: Vampiric Codex [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1120587
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57





	Static

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by Rizobact.

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.

.

The vampire, half vampire, whatever…  _ Ambulon _ immediately proved his worth the next time Bluestreak came back slagged and feral with hunger and had to be isolated until dawn. It wasn’t even a matter of Ambulon’s medical qualifications. Ratchet hadn’t been sure he trusted those at first; they were so very much out of date. Just the fact that they had someone besides Prime who was  _ inedible _ to get Bluestreak into isolation and keep him there had been invaluable. 

It didn’t hurt at all that Ambulon then proved perfectly competent at conducting repairs, and, even better, didn’t seem to have the sort of ego some experienced doctors developed. He acted as Ratchet’s junior doctor and nurse without comment while they repaired Bluestreak. 

He continued to follow Ratchet without comment, and Ratchet even forgot that Ambulon was a vampire of some flavor, right up until the doctor hesitated to step out of the hospital and into the sunshine. 

“Thought you said you could withstand the sun?” Ratchet asked bluntly, turning back to regard the recent defector. 

“Shockwave said I could,” Ambulon answered, still eying the border between light and shadow like it was the edge of a cliff he was contemplating jumping off of. “I don’t know how he tested that. I’ve not had a reason to test myself.” 

“Go back to the basement,” where the vampire ward of the hospital had been placed. “Rest there. You can make sure Bluestreak is discharged correctly, right?” Even if Ambulon could withstand sunlight, it had to be intensely stressful for him to just be standing here in sight of it. Ratchet knew that stressed vampires were hungry ones, though so far Ambulon had asked only for regular fuel, not access to anyone’s energon lines. Hunger was hunger, no matter what he was hungry  _ for. _

Ambulon looked nervously back through the lobby toward the elevator down. “I don’t have a key.”

Ratchet rolled his optics and pushed his way past the helicopter to activate the elevator’s access to the lower levels. It opened with a ding.

Ambulon dragged his feet. “Bluestreak’s the pack leader though.”

Ratchet rolled his optics again.  _ “I’m _ the pack leader. But that’s your choice: here or in your room back at the asylum. I like you, Ambulon, and I sorely appreciate the help, but you’re still a vampire, and a defector, and I’m not leaving you to just wander around until either you bite someone--”

“I won’t!” 

“--or someone decides to get rid of you. Here, with Bluestreak, or in your lair.”

Ratchet was still marvelling at the range of personalities the Autobot vampires displayed and there was still only a handful of them. He fervently hoped that number  _ stayed _ low, but still. He’d expected, at first, they would all be like… like Drift. Pushy. Clever. And in some ways they all were. None of them could let a boundary alone unchallenged, but there was a range, from Bluestreak’s constant challenges for leadership to Ricochet’s willingness to just let things be unless they came too close to him. Ambulon seemed to be… more on the submissive side, though he didn’t know if that was because of whatever had been done to make him “half” vampire, or if he was naturally like that. 

Ratchet gave him a klik to think, then added, “Decide quickly. I’m tired and won’t stand here forever.”

Ambulon looked at the elevator. “The asylum.” Ratchet could hear the very audible trepidation at the choice though.

He sighed. “Let’s find you a tarp or something.” It probably wouldn’t be enough to protect him completely from the sun, but it’d give him some confidence. Hopefully. 

Technically Ratchet should be keeping Ambulon close, under careful guard, but he went ahead and let him dash from shadow to shadow like the sunlit pavement was molten lava. He stayed in sight and others stayed out of their way. What the frag more did he need to do? Drag their defector along by chains? There were probably some ~~like Prowl~~ who thought he should, but Ratchet wasn’t going to. There weren’t any real experts on vampire psychology, but it was Ratchet’s opinion that planting a spy wouldn’t even occur to the Decepticons. Spying required awareness of how the potential spy would be perceived… the very definition of empathy. 

A breem later, Ratchet was stomping up the stairs of the former-asylum’s admin building. Ambulon pulled the tarp off and folded it as he followed, and handed it to Ratchet when they were at the top. Ratchet took the chance to look him over critically. No rust or burns. Definitely not the spontaneous rusting away the vampire hunters described. But he saw the paint on Ambulon’s legs and hands peeling off to expose bare metal, like it had been sitting out in the elements for vorns. 

That probably had hurt. Ratchet made a note to organize schedules to minimize Ambulon’s sun exposure.  _ Could _ go out in it did not mean it was harmless. 

His room was a converted conference room. He’d offered Ambulon a lair in the asylum building itself with the other vampires, but he’d prefered another retrofitted conference room near Ratchet’s. There were other staff. A repairmech and janitor. Another mech who came in to make sure the fuel and supplies were restocked. No one who stayed past nightfall, and no one else who slept here on the grounds. Ratchet was both understanding and annoyed. He really needed the help, but vampires were monsters. 

Ambulon was very much needed in that regard. 

“There aren’t,” the half-vampire asked hesitantly, “any Daywalkers here, are there?”

Even if he was proving to be inexplicably  _ nervous. _ Ratchet didn’t even think vampires were capable of nervousness. 

“Daywalkers?” That must be what the Decepticons called the under-plate ferals who didn’t go into torpor. “No. They’re not that common.” Less so now than they had ever been, due to attrition from all sides, and they had been unknown on the surface before the Breakout. 

“Alright…” Ambulon started heading down the hall, visibly dragging his feet in reluctance.

Ratchet rolled his optics. “If there’s something you need, ask plainly.” 

“I don’t need anything!”

“Uh huh.” Ratchet wondered what it could be. He’d made sure Ambulon had everything the other vampires did. His color, to keep his things from being stolen by the other vampires, was orange, which wasn’t most mechs’ favorite but in the darkness that had been left behind when they’d bricked up the window it shouldn’t matter that much. Ratchet refused to compromise on the color coding. He had enough theft related fights as it was without giving them things that could be easily mistaken for each others’. “Pull the other one. It’s got bells.” 

The expression made Ambulon furrow his forehead in confusion, and Ratchet wondered when that particular turn of phrase had come into favor and how much exposure to modern language the gladiators had had. 

“I submitted,” the vampire blurted out. “I submitted and let Dea-- him mark me. I still belong to him and there’s… I’m not supposed to be separate from him.”

Well, that wasn’t what Ratchet had expected at all. “If you’re going to go running back--”

“No!” Ambulon didn’t let Ratchet finish the sentence. “This is where he wants me to be and I… I can’t. I  _ could, _ but I can’t…”

Because that wasn’t confusing at all. Ratchet wasn’t unsympathetic. “So what’s the problem?”

“We, he and I, we laired…” Ambulon looked down at the floor, submitting, “together. And there’s something in me that says… I’m in danger if I lair alone. I’m  _ not _ mortal,” he choked on the word in a very un-vampirelike manner, “but I’m mortal  _ enough. _ Deadlock treated me like I was a vampiric vassal, not a mortal thrall, but now he’s not here, and I’m--”

“Abandoned,” Ratchet finished softly. He wondered if he should… He stepped forward and offered his shoulder like he would one of his friends, and Ambulon curled into the offered comfort, not like a vampire at all. “You’re no one’s thrall,” he assured. “And no one, mortal or vampire will treat you like it here.” 

“I’m  _ Deadlock’s,” _ Ambulon’s voice hitched. “That’s forever.”

“So am I,” Ratchet admitted. Ambulon had already… scented the claiming mark somehow, or else he would have never said it out loud. “So we’re part of the same pack, right?” 

Ambulon snorted. “Mortals aren’t pack.”

“They are here,” Ratchet said firmly. He was the top vampire in the Autobot pack. He suspected Ambulon was more concerned with, “And you’re not mortal.”

A vampire was  _ not _ what Ratchet wanted to be, but Ambulon had been a vampire for… a long time, and “part” mortal again for only a handful of vorns. He could understand,  _ and empathize, _ with that being more than a little disconcerting. 

“Marked vampires don’t lair alone,” Ambulon whispered. “Marked thralls… can.” 

“That instinct or something from before the pens?” Ratchet was actually a little curious. 

That made Ambulon lean away from Ratchet with a thoughtful frown. “I don’t know. Instinct, maybe, but I’m not a vassal; I’ve never sworn that kind of loyalty before and in the Decepticons… He protected me.”

So Ambulon was maybe feeling some upset from unfulfilled instincts and was definitely feeling vulnerable and insecure in a new situation. Fine. Ratchet could deal with that. 

“In,” he said, finally opening the door to his own quarters. “Rules though: you bite me, I kill you. I told you mortals hold real rank in this pack?  _ I’m _ top vampire and I don’t belong to or feed anyone.”

“Except Deadlock.”

Ratchet gave the other medic a flat look, who had the decency to look chagrined -- and submissive. “Rule  _ two _ is that we are not talking about that. If that scent of being,” Ratchet made a wild guess, “a higher ranked pack member sworn to the same vampire helps you, fine, but we’re not talking about that.”

Ratchet was not ready to talk about Drift and Deadlock being the same vampire. He was fairly sure he never would be. He wanted to know what had happened to him, what kind of vampire he was behind his battlefield viciousness, but he dreaded it. And he didn’t even know if it mattered. Deadlock was still the enemy. 

“I won’t then,” Ambulon promised. 

“There’s more rules, but I don’t know them yet so we’ll just figure them out later.”

Sunlight streamed in through the open window and as the half-vampire edged around the patches of light towards the berth. In contrast, Ratchet strode through the almost-afternoon light confidently and pulled the curtains across the glass with a pang of sorrow. He’d never really fallen into the… psychological quirk many others had of being unable to sleep unless it was in full sunlight, but he was still a little bit sorry not to have it. 

It still crept in around the edges of the felted steel cloth, sparkling across the floor and nowhere near the bed which was what was important.

Ambulon had crawled into the berth and wedged himself into the corner, though as a helicopter alt he just wasn’t built for smooshing himself into small spaces. Ratchet rolled his optics again. “As the submissive vampire, how would you normally do this?”

“Umm… You’d decide what’s comfortable and put me there,” Ambulon offered, then looked away. “Usually on top of me. You’d probably bite me too.”

Not happening. But if he decided what was comfortable… “Prone and tilt your rotors toward the wall.” Warily Ambulon took the indicated position. It wasn’t the  _ most _ comfortable position for a helicopter alt, but it was close and if Ratchet was going to fit in there at all then Ambulon couldn’t just let his rotors splay out wherever they wanted. Ratchet climbed in and fitted his frame against the other medic’s, pulling the blankets over them both. He wasn’t quite on  _ top _ but he slung his arm over Ambulon’s shoulders and pressed his head into the pillow pointedly. “Now recharge.”

“Yes, sir…” Ambulon’s voice slurred as he almost immediately dropped off into sleep, more relaxed than Ratchet had ever seen him. He didn’t remember Drift being this clingy. 

Ratchet stayed awake just a few kliks longer, making a note that if any of the Autobot vampires, his pack, claimed one another, he’d have to redo the lair assignments. He fell asleep already dreaming about remodeling the asylum to turn the current tiny lairs into slightly bigger ones… 

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End

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a link to the [Vampiric Codex Official Timeline](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uS2EX-d3Npd00EkN2SxOa7010AUFPI0TVqiS2vbnsbQ/edit?usp=sharing).
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
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